Nihongi Banquet Poetry: Rewriting Japanese Myth in Verse

Abstract:At three banquets in 882, 906, and 943, Japanese courtiers gathered to drink wine and write poetry about the deities and heroes enshrined in Nihon shoki, Japan's first official state history. These poems evince how members of the Heian court imagined the origins of the imperial system and demonstrate how the poets related those origins to their own lives. They also tell a very different story about antiquity and the creation of Japan than does Nihon shoki, whose narrative they adapted to conform with the circumstances of their own era. This article examines how and why these adaptations were made and what this shift in meaning reveals about the reading and reception of Nihon shoki during the ninth and tenth centuries.